SKA CSP controls: technological challenges

The Square Kilometer Array (SKA) project is an international effort to build the world's largest radio telescope, with eventually over a square kilometer of collecting area. For SKA Phase 1, Australia will host the low-frequency instrument with more than 500 stations, each containing around 250 individual antennas, whilst South Africa will host an array of close to 200 dishes. The scale of the SKA represents a huge leap forward in both engineering and research and development towards building and delivering a unique instrument, with the detailed design and preparation now well under way. As one of the largest scientific endeavors in history, the SKA will brings together close to 100 organizations from 20 countries. Every aspect of the design and development of such a large and complex instrument requires state-of-the-art technology and innovative approach. This poster (or paper) addresses some aspects of the SKA monitor and control system, and in particular describes the development and test results of the CSP Local Monitoring and Control prototype. At the SKA workshop held in April 2015, the SKA monitor and control community has chosen TANGO Control System as a framework, for the implementation of the SKA monitor and control. This decision will have a large impact on Monitor an Control development of SKA. As work is on the way to incorporate TANGO Control System in SKA is in progress, we started to development a prototype for the SKA Central Signal Processor to mitigate the associated risks. In particular we now have developed a uniform class schema proposal for the sub-Element systems of the SKA-CSP

The detector control unit of the fine guidance sensor instrument on-board the ARIEL mission: design status

ARIEL is an ESA mission whose scientific goal is to investigate exoplanetary atmospheres. The payload is composed by two instruments: AIRS (ARIEL IR Spectrometer) and FGS (Fine Guidance System). The FGS detection chain is composed by two HgCdTe detectors and by the cold Front End Electronics (SIDECAR), kept at cryogenic temperatures, interfacing with the F-DCU (FGS Detector Control Unit) boards that we will describe thoroughly in this paper. The F-DCU are situated in the warm side of the payload in a box called FCU (FGS Control Unit) and contribute to the FGS VIS/NIR imaging and NIR spectroscopy. The F-DCU performs several tasks: drives the detectors, processes science data and housekeeping telemetries, manages the commands exchange between the FGS/DPU (Data Processing Unit) and the SIDECARs and provides high quality voltages to the detectors. This paper reports the F-DCU status, describing its architecture, the operation and the activities, past and future necessary for its development

The instrument control unit of the ARIEL payload: design evolution following the unit and payload subsystems SRR (system requirements review)

ARIEL (Atmospheric Remote-sensing InfraRed Large-survey) is a medium-class mission of the European Space Agency, part of the Cosmic Vision program, whose launch is foreseen by early 2029. ARIEL aims to study the composition of exoplanet atmospheres, their formation and evolution. The ARIEL’s target will be a sample of about 1000 planets observed with one or more of the following methods: transit, eclipse and phase-curve spectroscopy, at both visible and infrared wavelengths simultaneously. The scientific payload is composed by a reflective telescope having a 1m-class elliptical primary mirror, built in solid Aluminium, and two focal-plane instruments: FGS and AIRS. FGS (Fine Guidance System)1 has the double purpose, as suggested by its name, of performing photometry (0.50-0.55 µm) and low resolution spectrometry over three bands (from 0.8 to 1.95 µm) and, simultaneously, to provide data to the spacecraft AOCS (Attitude and Orbit Control System) with a cadence of 10 Hz and contributing to reach a 0.02 arcsec pointing accuracy for bright targets. AIRS (ARIEL InfraRed Spectrometer) instrument will perform IR spectrometry in two wavelength ranges: between 1.95 and 3.9 µm (with a spectral resolution R > 100) and between 3.9 and 7.8 µm with a spectral resolution R > 30. This paper provides the status of the ICU (Instrument Control Unit), an electronic box whose purpose is to command and supply power to AIRS (as well as acquire science data from its two channels) and to command and control the TCU (Telescope Control Unit)

Preliminary surface charging analysis of Ariel payload dielectrics in early transfer orbit and L2-relevant space environment

Ariel [1] is the M4 mission of the ESA’s Cosmic Vision Program 2015-2025, whose aim is to characterize by lowresolution transit spectroscopy the atmospheres of over one thousand warm and hot exoplanets orbiting nearby stars. The operational orbit of the spacecraft is baselined as a large amplitude halo orbit around the Sun-Earth L2 Lagrangian point, as it offers the possibility of long uninterrupted observations in a fairly stable radiative and thermo-mechanical environment. A direct escape injection with a single passage through the Earth radiation belts and no eclipses is foreseen. The space environment around Earth and L2 presents significant design challenges to all spacecraft, including the effects of interactions with Sun radiation and charged particles owning to the surrounding plasma environment, potentially leading to dielectrics charging and unwanted electrostatic discharge (ESD) phenomena endangering the Payload operations and its data integrity. Here, we present some preliminary simulations and analyses about the Ariel Payload dielectrics and semiconductors charging along the transfer orbit from launch to L2 include

SKA Monitor and Control: Harmonization Challenges

The Square Kilometre Array (SKA) project is an international effort to build the world's largest radio telescope, with eventually over a square kilometre of collecting area. The Project is one of the largest scientific endeavours in history and will bring together close to 100 organizations from 20 countries. This is why a recent decision has introduced (SKA-wide) a coherent approach to the monitoring and control task. A dedicated workshop, held in Trieste, has indicated Tango Control Framework as the tool of choice. This project is too large to be managed in pseudo-real time, due to the ensemble of interacting hardware and software which makes it extremely complex. Once we have identified the right tools to solve it, the current challenge is to find the smartest strategies to implement the whole SKA project by using the Tango Control framework. In particular we are developing a uniform class schema proposal and some alternative approaches to program and control the complex subsystems which constitute a large part of SKA